Como se dice ‘Tot’ en espanol?

Ok, it took me a while to post again. But hey…it might end up a common situation and I can’t go apologozing every time, right? (ps, I’m sorry).

So to keep my sister happy and to give all you readers who clicked over from her page some content as well, here it is…

Last week I bought myself some Mayo Coba beans. Didn’t really know what they were, but why not try something new. Since they have a Spanish-sounding name (and are La Preferida brand) I figured they’d work well with some kind of salsa, cheddar, etc arrangement. I brought them home, pulled out some peppers, onions, salsa and cheese and thought long and hard about what to do. Suddenly a craving for the tater tots that I knew were in the freezer hit. What’s a guy to do?! Do I change my whole plan and make a veggie burger with tots instead? Hell no! They must be included in the current plan.

So I followed the directions on the bag and started some tots (2-3 servings according to the people at Ore-Ida).

While those went I cut up half an onion (actually a quarter of a yellow and a quarter of a red) and a green bell pepper. They populated my favorite little cutting board like this:

I have bigger cutting boards, but I really like the feel of this one. Perhaps I should go back to Ikea and see if they just a bigger one of these.

Moving on. I heated up my big frying/saute pan, put some oil in (1-2tbsp) and threw all those veggies in. As I stirred them around I added a splash of sherry, some cumin seeds, chili powder, garlic powder and a pinch of salt. Once the onions were translucent I dumped in the can worth of beans.

Also, I always rinse my canned beans first. If you leave the top partially connected you can even do that part right in the can. It’s totally bachelor style and kind of works like mixing a martini. Put water in, swirl and hold back the beans with the lid while you pour the water back out. Yea, I know…ridiculously lazy.

Next I put in about 1/3 cup of taco sauce (turned out I was out of salsa). At this point my tots were done. You probably should have checked on them once the peppers and onions were going, so pretend I said that earlier. I pulled out the tots and threw about 2 cups of shredded cheddar in with the beans, etc and stirred it around a while. Then I took the tots and mixed them into all the cheesey goodness and put it all on a plate. You could also put the tots on the plate/bowl as a base and spoon the mixture on top. When it was done it looked like this:

I’m still working on picture quality, but you get the idea. Now you’re saying to yourself: “Isn’t this just a casserole?” and I thought of that. So, if you wanted to make this as a casserole I’m pretty sure you could just layer everything in a casserole dish. Although the tater tots would probably be soggier than mine were.

This one was good stuff and really it only took about 5-10min longer than just baking up some frozen tater tots. I’ll keep you updated if I try the oven version, because that would be even quicker and probably better for you since it wouldn’t have the oil.

The tots made this meal for sure. Also, I noticed that my picture has a can of black beans in it. The mayo cobas had been reserved for a different salsa, cheese, etc combination but they subbed in when the black bean can ended up being bulged out on the bottom (no good). I’m glad that happened though, because I think their flavor worked much better.